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The song Blackout is moving up the
Music Industry charts, and is bound to reach number one because
it fits the industry’s belief systems.

In what can only be described as acts of Dumb and Dumber, the
music industry is now targeting businesses in their quest to
censor the internet and control our rights to digital
goods.

Just recently, EMI filed suit against Boston
based Redigi in an attempt to shut down the company’s
facilitation of used music sales. In EMI’s complaint, the
company claims that, “While ReDigi touts its service as the
equivalent of a used record store, that analogy is inapplicable:
used record stores do not make copies to fill their shelves,” and
further, “ReDigi is actually a clearinghouse for copyright
infringement and a business model built on widespread,
unauthorized copying of sound recordings.”

1. Users take responsibility for content they upload
2. Content owners notify website owners of infringing
material
3. Website owners receive the notice, review the notice and then
take down any infringing content.

In other words, Redigi is protected from legal action because the
user is responsible for their actions. That’s why sites like eBay
and YouTube are not shut down or sued by over-zealous copyright
holders.

In it’s response filed today, Redigi counters that it’s not
creating copies, but legally facilitating a sales of legally
owned music. Redigi’s service is so sophisticated that it can
detect legally owned music from copies and thus only allow the
sale of legally owned, digital goods. Also, that first sale doctrine applies in
digital goods as it does in the analog world. In other
words, Redigi only allow users to sell legally purchased digital
music and that right is secured by law.

From my viewpoint, we are dealing with part two in the horror of
the grotesquely senseless. That Hollywood and the Music Industry
haven’t yet understood that they are in a new world. A world not
controlled by scripts, stages, sets and lights.

And after years of preaching about infringement violation, they
are attempting to infringe on ours. They are effectively saying
that we no longer have the right to the digital goods we buy.
That they still own them even after we pay for them. That
first sale doctrine is suspended because they say so.

To further understand the lunacy of the Music Industry’s
attitude, observe the RIAAs callous reaction to the Wikipedia
self imposed blackout RIAAs: "After Wikipedia blackout,
somewhere, a student today is doing original research and getting
his/her facts straight," tweeted spokesmen Jonathan Lamy.

Notably, in the practice what you preach department, Lamy later
deleted the tweet in an ironic act of self-censorship.

From my perspective, the music industry possesses neither the
mind nor the initiative to understand that the world has passed
them by. They are stuck in a type of mind-set epitomized by the
intellectually sterile. No new ideas, no understanding of
new business models, and no reason to connect with the 21st
century.

They are having to deal with irrelevancy, and are striving to
bring the rest of us with them.